Page History

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1. VLC Media Player - play DVDs and almost any video format
   

   1. To have multiple windows, run,

      Code Block
      language bash
      open -n /Application/VLC.app/

      Note, the playlist tends to go over the same place so it's not obvious sometimes if it worked. Figure out a parameter to fix this later.

2. Microsoft Office - Yeah you can't avoid it and using it since 2010 have not run into compatibility issues.
3. Kuvva - Wallpaper chnager that pulls down nice wallpapers.

Essential Utilities

1. Better Snap Tool (App Store $2) - Get Windows 7 like snapping in addition to being able to use keyboard shortcuts to snap windows wherever you want. Also has loads of other features. Went through lots of tools like SizeUp before getting to this one.
2. Keyboard Maestro(App Store $36) - Powerful shortcut utility. Very useful for me because I use an IBM keyboard. Common things I setup,
   1. CTRL-V - clear out formatting before pasting
   2. Winkey-Home - increase brightness
   3. Winkey-End - decrease brightness
3. Spark with the Plain Clip Plug-in -- Free but less powerful version of Keyboard Maestro.
4. The Unarchiver@ (App Store) - handles common formats such rar that the built in compression software does not.
5. Go2Shell % (App Store) - jump to terminal in currently open GUI folder.
6. Araxis Merge 64-bit - Best diff tool I have ever found. (disable Ribbon Interface, check do not show splash window, add folder filter to ignore .svn folders and make the default encoding UTF-8 No BOM). If you have a Windows license you can use it on the Mac too. http://www.kaleidoscopeapp.com/ is in beta but it also looks like a very good alternative if you did not buy Araxis yet.
7. TinyCal (App Stwore) - yet to try but it looks like what I want... simple visual calendar integrated with Google Calendar.
8. Better Snap Tool (App Store $2) - Get Windows 7 like snapping in addition to being able to use keyboard shortcuts to snap windows wherever you want. Also has loads of other features. Went through lots of tools like SizeUp before getting to this one.

Apple Key

Spark - Allows you to create all sort of custom keyboard shortcuts that Mac OS X can't do. Only thing is not sure how to delete entries once they are in. To ask developer. Does not allow overriding of shortcuts in apps but Mac OS X has that built in and does not do automation but again Mac OS X has it built in... looking close to final solution but just in case will evaluate these,

With Spark I use the Plain Clip Plug-in - Allows you to strip formatting from text on paste. Installation instructions are not clear. Will do a write up to clarify.

Other Products to Try

Shortcuts (app store) - Saw brightness control here so looks promising. Tried free trial... not polished. Deleted a system shortcut and could not get it back.

Keyboard Meastro (app store) - most expensive... but no ratings.

Fix Home and End Key

This absolutely drives me nuts as a programmer. Home should go to the beginning of the line and end to the end of the line. On the Mac OS home takes you to the beginning of a document and end to the end of a document.

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